Gwen Stefani should stick to making bum flaps. Not quite a skirt, not quite a dish rag, the Stefani bum flap dangles off the guts of our divorced aunts and 12-year-old mall-slut daughters, the ones who steal Livestrong bracelets and dry-hump public schoolkids in Pac Sun dressing rooms. Bum flaps are these people's stars and stripes. Not all of us want to salute this flag, but it exists, and it gives America something else to believe in-- and it's not nearly as expensive as a valium addiction or Kaplan SAT course.

As widely predicted, 35-year old singer/fashionista Stefani has temporarily given up No Doubt to fully embrace a high-pop lifestyle with nary a pierced tongue in-cheek. The metamorphosis began with her Eve and Dr. Dre collaboration on 2001's killer single "Let Me Blow Ya Mind", and is completed here with her solo debut Love Angel Music Baby, a spineless, starfucked advertisement for her high-end clothing line.

Obviously, we can't expect 12 more cuts as personal or urgent as debut single "What You Waiting For", Stefani's slick self-steeling kick in the pitch-corrected plaids, and one of the best electro songs this year-- especially when the pop star openly PRs that she didn't "really see [LAMB] as a 'solo' record in the typical sense... The idea was to be open and let my ego shut up and sit over in the corner and make something great based on a concept." If Stefani wants to sacrifice her identity, that's fine, but hot Christ, she's working with everyone from Andre 3000 to the Neptunes to New Order to Dr. Dre here. So why isn't LAMB bigger, better, faster, more? Is it the scourge of 4 Non Blondes' Linda Perry, who coaxed Stefani into finishing the solo project and all but forced her back into the studio because Perry reportedly only "had a brief window of time available"? What's going on?

In fairness, one of the Andre tracks, "Bubble Pop Electric", isn't half-bad, a brave Prince-goes-Stray Cats doowop shuffle with a great hook and an Andre-as-Johnny Vulture gentleman boyfriend cameo. The track is silly and fun, and probably exactly what Stefani et al., wanted out of LAMB. Which is what makes Andre's second contribution, "Long Way to Go", so perplexing: The maudlin MLK Jr. samples and the duet's pointed appeal to interracial dating ("We've got a long way to go!/ It's beyond Martin Luthur/ Upgrade computer") feel out of place on an otherwise carefree album boasting lines like, "You know you are my treasure chest," and, "We got hydroponic love/ And we smoke it."

And another thing about Stefani's treasure chests-- not to mention, "We climbed all the way from the bottom to the top"; the Eve- and Dre- and Tevye-powered camp-hop "Rich Girl"; "I only want to fly first class desires (you're my limousine)"; "We're luxurious like Egyptian cotton"; "If I was a wealthy girl/ I'd get me four Harajuku girls to inspire me"; the unintentionally offensive orientalist fetishism, "Now we get to lay back"; "Ch-Ching Ch-Ching-- we're loaded and we're not going to blow it"; the soulless Nellee Hooper 90s R&B; vanity affair "Luxurious"; and the rest of LAMB's zombied buy-LAMB-clothing mantras and transparent Hollywood Dream bullshit-- the Joker's free-money parade through Gotham City was a much more entertaining display of wealth, and he had Prince, not just Wendy & Lisa.

Elsewhere on LAMB, the Neptunes shit out a Queen pastiche called "Hollaback Girl", which has about as much club potential as a 13-year old with a milk moustache and his dad's ID. For "The Real Thing", co-producers and co-players New Order unbizarrify, unlove, and untriangulate "Bizarre Love Triangle" just enough that the millions of people who heard about New Order on Karaoke Revolution won't notice the similarities right away. Seriously, anyone remotely involved with "The Real Thing" should find a stray dog and let it bite him.

So, final tally: LAMB has one mega-hit, one okay song, three stillborns, and seven full-fledged embarrassments. For Stefani, fashion has officially come first; to her credit, these songs are the slickest, shiniest, bum-flappiest failures of the year.

-Nick Sylvester, November 24th, 2004